As I mentioned, I’m involved in fundraising for Akari Software at the moment. It’s been very busy for the past while, and even more intensively so for the past couple of weeks as we perfected our 1-page summary, our pitch slides and our business plan.
I’m lucky enough to have a great network of contacts and, between myself and @eoghanol, we’ve send the 1-pager to over 30 people. We’ve been getting good feedback and some indications of interest in investing. It’s all been very positive.
The most valuable feedback, to me, has been from people who have been down similar paths themselves before. They don’t provide feedback on the order of bullet points or question why the costs go up in year X – they say things like “you’re undervaluing the company”, “you’re not being ambitious enough” and “why do you need external funding at all?”. This kind of thinking that questions our fundamental assumptions is liberating because we’ve spent so long on this process, we’ve almost forgotten that there are other paths to the same destination and, even, other destinations.
I’m looking forward to seeing where we go next 😉
What about you? What’s the most valuable piece of feedback you ever received? And did you take it on board or not?